Anyone here do FX work? Need to light a crystal skull...

Looking for advice. I'm still waiting for my life-size crystal skull to be ready to order, as it is currently out of stock:



In the interim, I'm trying to figure out how best to light it. Of course I want it to operate as close to the film as possible, so it must be battery-operated, and with small enough components to be hidden inside of the clear-ish skull (it's hollow). The lights in the film were obviously done in post-production, so I'm trying to make something that doesn't exist.

So far the best I can find is this thing, which (if reasonably affordable) will of course be gutted for it's parts:



I'm awaiting an email from them to tell me their price.

I'm not married to the idea of using this, in fact I'd like to find something better since the lights in this one only fade from one color to the next without any movement. With the exception of the above light (which isn't even as good as I would like) all the supernova effect lights that I can find are ac instead of dc.

I don't necessarily even need the "supernova" effect per se, but I can't think of much else that would approximate the effect from the film, aside from building a crystal skull from scratch out of glass and turning it into a battery operated plasma sphere, which I'm just not up to!!!

Anyway, if anyone out there has any brilliant workable ideas, I'm all ears!

Bump

I haven't received a reply from the person that produces the light I mentioned in my last post. Any suggestions? I'm kind of running out of ideas.

The first thing that comes to mind is a one of various promotional/novelty items that has 3 LEDs (red/green/blue) and color cycles. We've given some away at work (little cubes), my son got a tumbler from Rainforest Cafe with one in the base, and I seem to acquire (and dispose of them) at various conferences and see them at toy stores.

Googling around, you can find them as novelties, e.g. as "mood rings" for less than $5. There are also color changing X-mas LED lights (less than $20) which you could wad up inside for more brightness.

InexorableTash said:

The first thing that comes to mind is a one of various promotional/novelty items that has 3 LEDs (red/green/blue) and color cycles. We've given some away at work (little cubes), my son got a tumbler from Rainforest Cafe with one in the base, and I seem to acquire (and dispose of them) at various conferences and see them at toy stores.

Googling around, you can find them as novelties, e.g. as "mood rings" for less than $5. There are also color changing X-mas LED lights (less than $20) which you could wad up inside for more brightness.

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Thanks for the reply Inexorable Tash. Yeah I've thought of that too, and I actually have an rgb setup from a fiberoptic lamp that I already bought for this purpose! It was actually my first idea on this, but then I started seeing some fantastic options which really got me wanting something more. The real barrier is my battery-power stipulation.....

Chances are that most of the light devices that run on AC are really DC (100% valid for any LED powered effect) and use a common AC-in DC-out power supply. You may very well be able to strip the cable from the power supply and connect a battery pack with little or no soldering, just be sure to respect voltage and polarity